Want to Complain About Working in Congress? There’s an App for That

Picture a young, underpaid staffer on Capitol Hill, living off the crumbs of Tortilla Coast chips and cheese cubes stolen from Exxon-sponsored happy hours, living in a constant state of agitation that the next election might put them out of a job. Imagine their desperate need to blow off steam, ranting about all they have to put up with, but worried that they will make their congressperson look bad.

Now, there’s an app for that.

Enter Cloakroom, which Re/code describes as “Yik Yak for congressional staffers,” with raunchy college students replaced by equally raunchy young federal employees. Like Yik Yak, the app is designed to create a hyper-local social-media community. But unlike Yik Yak, which allows anyone within a five-mile radius to post semi-anonymously, you’ll need a House or Senate e-mail address to access Cloakroom, app creator Ted Henderson told Re/code. (Guest access is available for a day if you’re physically located on Capitol Hill.)

From the screenshots taken by Re/code, there does not seem to be much evidence of anything particularly unseemly—at least, not yet—and if there were, Henderson told Re/code, it would be rare, since Cloakroom users “are all somewhat professional, they’re staffers on the Hill.” That said, Cloakroom does have a staff of three to remove the errant racial slur or dick pic, although chatter about which office has the hottest staffers, discussions about whether the word “ghetto” is offensive, and questions like, “Anal leakage due to sodomy with a cucumber. Please advise,” remain up.